On Futurology

If history studies our past and social sciences study our present, what is the study of our future? Future(s) Studies (colloquially called "future(s)" by many of the field's practitioners) is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to hypothesize the possible, probable, preferable, or alternative future(s).

One of the fundamental assumptions in future(s) studies is that the future is plural rather than singular, that is, that it consists of alternative future(s) of varying degrees of likelihood but that it is impossible in principle to say with certainty which one will occur.

Wouldn't that be hilarious though, if Dimty Itskov was to dissapear to some lalaland on his yatch with all that money! I mean the guy is raising millions of $$$ and lobbying world's biggest futurists and scientists.

I'd laugh so hard if he turns out to be a con artist.

ETA: But on serious note I do not think it is a scam. What I'd def say is that they have some overtly ambitious, if not impossible goals.

Avatar A - A robotic copy of a human body, remotely controlled by a "brain-computer" interface

Status - 85% complete. Development period of approximately 3 years.

I hope I'm wrong, but that sounds absolutely nuts. Did anyone watch the DARPA robotics challenge recently? It was like watching paint dry. The current state of humanoid robotics is damn near pathetic (we're not much better off than we were 10 years ago -- see QRIO), and you're gonna tell me you're 3 years away from something that can function as well as a human body? Color me skeptical.

Not to imply that their estimate is at all accurate, but those QRIO robots are so incomparable to the DARPA robots it's absurd. We are unbelievably close to general purpose robotics and we've made massive strides this last decade. It's ignorant and absurd to imply otherwise.

Cryptocurrency is a genie out of the bottle now. It's possible it won't be bitcoin, but there's no way markets won't find a need for a privacy-friendly, unregulated, and indestructable store of wealth.

The idea to insert our consciousness inside a machine is foolish. The reason is because computers as we understand them can be hacked, controlled, and manipulated by outside sources. For some reason the Transhumanist movement is obsessed with hooking themselves inside a Matrix-like reality.... it's quite disturbing knowing how people seriously want to disassemble what it means to be human.

To a degree, organic brains can also get hacked and manipulated. The main difference is that we currently have a much higher level of access to computers. There's no reason to assume a digital brain wouldn't be heavily locked down.